Population Concerns

I'm really enjoying the process of creating my character at the moment. There are so many skills to choose from and now that I have given up trying to specialise in archery, combat has become more interesting. This for me is probably the thing I like most about the game. Building, experimenting, finding the most efficient way of going about my business. I don't think I will ever get bored of this side of the game and it may be enough to keep me around for some time.

The one concern I have is that I am also an explorer. I can spend months just travelling around in a wonderland of discovery. In this respect the game seems to be really struggling. I spent yesterday exploring and visited Norgard first, then moved on to the Drachvald and maybe I was unlucky, but both areas feel incredibly unfinished. Each scene was either in development or using another scene as a place holder. Having to stick to the seemingly low number of areas that are reasonably finished (happy to be corrected about this) as opposed to being able to explore could eventually be a turn off. This type of fleshing out of the world takes a lot of time and money and it's going to be a tough ride.

I play off peak which doesn't help but in this time I didn't see another player. SoTA is not going to survive as is I fear even with the best intentions of the dedicated community willing to back it big. Port needs a plan to encourage a steady influx of new players and its going to be their biggest challenge.

 

That is the whole thing. Meeting and making new friends. I am still in the hopes of running into some old friends from my UO days. Doubtful but the hope is still there. Anyone from UO. I played on Chesapeake and Lake Austin shards. Characters were Crimson Rose, Bella Rose, Polgara, Scarlett Rose and a few others as well. Those were my main characters though. But like i said I am up for meeting and making new friends if anyone wants.

 

I realize this isn't UO and comparing it often brings reminders of that, but I'll respond with one of my favorite aspects of UO and why Shroud isn't appealing to me at the moment.

My most enjoyable experience in UO were outside of Sorcerer's Delight in Britain. I spent hours there alongside other inscribers selling scrolls to passers by. Friendships were born in game and that made the world feel real to me. More than anything else, it was the interactivity with total strangers that drew me into UO as a place. It was the population, the hustle and bustle present in each town. The life breathed into the game by an active populace eager to interact within the confines of that world.

I haven't gotten that with Shroud. Sure, there is an events calendar and there are guilds to be found on the forums, but that's the type of thing that has turned me off of every mmo since UO. I engrossed myself in that world, rudimentary and limited communication and all. The relationships that formed formed organically, not from a forum search for active guilds.

That isn't to disparage those who use discord or the forums. I realize many people use those to form long lasting relationships both in and out of game. I'd venture I'm in a very tiny minority in my opinion.

The empty feel of towns, the lack of life breathed into the world by an active, communicative playerbase in game takes from me any desire to play. I long for an mmo that feels like a populated world with not just people but in game conversations. I want to overhear things and interact. I want life and activity all around me that's contained within the world. Even if the Steamcharts numbers are only reflecting 1/5 of the playerbase and there are 1000 people logging in, all of them online, there are close to 300 towns. It makes exploring for new, vibrant and active towns discouraging as the vast majority have little to no activity. Perhaps that will change in the future, but in the interim it seems an impossible impediment to overcome until launch, whenever that will be. 6 months, a year later we should expect to see increases. I had hoped with persistence and 60,000 backer accounts to see a decent population prior to launch. That hasn't been the case thus far and it's been a disappointment for me.

Sadly, the population levels don't give me that feeling. That may certainly change! But so much of the playerbase and guilds communicate via discord and other services, it's doubtful the game will provide me with the what I enjoyed most about UO. That's fine! It's just not what I was hoping for.

 

I personally think the sheer number of towns in the game probably contributes to the feeling of emptiness. Like Evillego6 said, in UO you could stand on a street corner and people would stream past you endlessly. I know the towns are there for player housing and player run towns but that is their drawback IMO.

What made me delete the game was when I realized that it would be almost impossible to ever PvP in a major town like Owls... Because the game directly caters to the carebears with player housing and all the items you can place on a lot both inside and out... the load times will always be horrid and getting load lag in the middle of PvP is a big no. When I realized that, the decision was simple for me.

In fairness to Portal., they probably didn't advertise the game as UO2; that was just wishful thinking on the PvPers' part. I only spent like $45 on the game and have played off and on for over a year so I got my money's worth and I look at it as a TY to Richard Garriott for the Ultima series and UO.

 

That's actually a good point, that I had never really given much credit...maybe it is the size of the world and amount of cities. Maybe when they hit the "kickstarter jackpot" and they decided what to expand, landmass and game area was one of the first things. And maybe they waaaay over-estimated the amount of content they could come up with? Way over-estimated population (this one is understandable, the population now doesn't reflect the amount of support this game seems to have gotten early on).

 

Schlock Mercenary fan?

 

I still ask myself who this game is aimed at.
1. The graphics have come a long way but let's face it. They are not as good as other games from 2016. Many don't care about graphics but still more do. So the graphics are one factor why some people will shy away from this game.
2. It is a rather old school game with complex gaming mechanics, an old-school UI and old-school gameplay. While some like this, some do not.
3. This game does not have an open world like other RPGs. For some (like me) this doesn't matter, yet others want an open world and thus won't play SotA.
4. Some people expected this to be UO 2 which it isnt't. After they realized it, some of them don't play anymore.
5. Some people (like me) expected SotA to be a single player RPG like Ultima 7 with the option to play online. Unfortunately this is not the case which made many single player fans leave the game.
6. Some people expected something new an unique. A new approach to story telling in an online game with choices and real consequences as well as a new approach to play cooperatively with friends. Yet SotA more and more becomes a run-of-the-mill MMORPG. So some of those players who expected more left.
7. Some players expected more from PvP. Yet SotA doesn't offer much in this regard, so some of those left.
8. After SotA went persistent, some thought that this game was released which it wasn't. The state the game is in made many people leave again.
9. Even when marketing for SotA begins for real who do the devs want to reach? The best lots are gone so people who are into housing might become annoyed. Powergamers might become annoyed, too as they enter the game after release when many other players already reached GM status. Single player fans? It doesn't look like they will get what they want...
10. What new and unique elements does SotA offer to the MMO market? There are many other themepark and sandbox MMOs out there. So why should people switch to SotA?
11. SotA offers a selective multiplayer approach. There will always be people who will just play in single player or friends only mode because they perfer those modes which is ok. But this means they will not really be a part of the online population.
12. SotA wants to cater to single player fans who like a story but it also caters to sandbox-MMOs fans. Yet those two genres don't really fit together. Many gameplay mechanics are too different which leads to SotA neither being a true SP game nor a true MMORPG. So people of both groups don't find what they seek with SotA and might leave.

I still think that it was a mistake to focus on the MMO part. Because the market is saturated. Many players are fed up with MMORPGs or they really want something new and unique which SotA doesn't offer. Actually it doesn't play that different from other MMOs. It plays more old school which not everyone likes. SotA is a niche game. And as a niche game the population probably will never be really high. I expect many of the POTs to become ghost towns over time. Simply because the high population to fill all of those cities as well as all of the NPC cities is not there and I think with the design of the game as it is, it will probably never come. SotA is too much of niche game for this to happen.

 

Unfortunately, pretty much all of Lord darkmoon's points are right on target. Hopefully, a lot of these issues will be fixed... and soon. (I'm not sure they can be, yet I remain hopeful. Mostly.)

 

Can we just make all towns the same instance (sp/fo combined into multiplayer) once and for all?

 

@Lord_Darkmoon

Many valid points for the current situation now, but official release is in a year's time and that is when we can more accurately judge if they did good on their promises or fulfilled their vision of ep1.

With our continued feedback on gameplay and bugs, with the Devs listening of course, SotA will be launched next year as a better game than what we started with on July 27th.

The sacrifice for having a one year persistent Alpha/Beta is players with 40 GMs, NPC landmass that is almost totally filled, an abundance of POT deeds without the critical playerbase to support yet, and a multitude of bugs yet to be found in the coming months.

We're here for a reason. The least we can do now is to support the game by giving constructive feedback like you just did; and doing up a personal report card when SotA launches officially.

 

If we don't point out the wrong paths being taken now, 'release' is too late.

 

I WANT this game to be extremely successfull, but Lord_Darkmoon makes some very valid points. I am a die hard Ultima fan. Especially 6-9 I loved (and I also played UO for quite some time). No other RPGs managed to make me feel like I am playing a really exciting book. I didn't even realize that I am doing quests because everything I had to do made sense and everything moved the story forward. This was THE strongest point of those games - no narrative at all in UO was sad but ok back then because the MMO concept was fresh and exciting.

MMOs are not fresh and exciting anymore and I want the strong storytelling back. So far the story seems shoe-horned into a MMO framework. Tacked on so to speak.

I know that Chris and Starr are more excited about the MMO part and I fear that this prevents the SP part to be an important one in the whole project. I hope Richard puts his foot down soon and insists on Ultima SP strengths being implemented.

 

Why is it happening already? Because the game is deeply underwhelming for many people. That's the unvarnished, non-sugar-coated truth of the matter.

"But I love it!" some will say in reply, "Therefore you are wrong, Canterbury!"

Sadly, folks, just because some of you absolutely love the game, doesn't mean what I have seen out there is wrong in any way, shape or form.

I've come across people who have dropped serious coin on SotA and can't bring themselves to, essentially, waste their time playing something they dislike.

 

it's only fair that a crowdfunded game not be 'aimed at' anybody in particular. If the majority vote gets the majority of developer attention than that sounds fair, and appears to be the case.

That said, the game isn't released yet. I feel that judging progress based on the patch notes is the responsible way to do so. Based on that, things are going rather well in my opinion.

It's been said already in this thread that it's more than normal for a game that is launched in the summer will see a sharp decline in the months following launch. Beyond that trying to speculate reasons is nothing more than fearmongering. If I or anyone else who was a reasonable person like me had the ability to do so, this thread would have easily been locked days ago, because it's better to post ideas for game improvements in their own thread so that they can be analyzed and discussed. Sad that it isn't, when in comparison threads containing multiple thoughts and suggestions about community issues are consistently locked without any real discussion or reason, as if this were some sort of facism.

There are definitely some inconsistencies in the impressions we're getting from the top down here, but like I say it's best served up in a thread of it's own so it can be analyzed and debated properly.

 

My opinion: If you "lure" people into giving money by announcing a certain game then it would be better to stick to that annoucement. People got excited about what was announced, this is why they gave their money. How can it be fair to those people when others come along, cry loud for changes and because they are so loud the devs change the game, ignoring those who gave them money earlier for what was announced?

 

Holy crowly a single thing they said would be in the game isn't in yet, pre-release?? Call the cops. THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!! Better post non stop about it in every thread right up until launch!

I'm just worried that when they launch the game and surprise you with everything they promised that you'll feel so bad that you kept posting so disparagingly about it that you'll end up not wanting to play. And I look forward to meeting you in the shardfalls one day!

 

I didn't call out one single feature that isn't in the game yet in my answer to you. It was a general statement. If a dev studio announces a game, they should stick to the game design that was announced if they collect money up front. This applies not only to SotA but to every crowdfunded game.
There was no mention of single player etc. in my answer to you.

 

I am not worried about that at all. Its highly unlikely they can achieve "everything they promised" within the remaining time of one year. Lord Darkmoons list is pretty correct. You cant correct those things within one year and, as far as i see it, too much players came and moved on already. Most wont come back. Even if they really managed to fix "everything".

 

I bet we probably could (and do) get a decent idea what is and isn't being developed by looking at the daily stand-ups.

 

how much? I'll take that action.

If the game gets launched anything less than a masterpiece, and with absolutely no surprise content, i'll give you 2:1